How to Clone the Primary Display to Multiple Monitors with help of Actual Multiple Monitors

1. Introduction

Many people wonder how to clone the primary monitor to several additional displays. Standard Windows facilities allow cloning the primary monitor to just one additional monitor. However, Actual Multiple Monitors allows you to overcome this limitation.

2. How to Clone the Primary Display to Multiple Monitors with help of Actual Multiple Monitors

To clone the primary monitor to multiple monitors, Actual Multiple Monitors offers you use of the Desktop Mirroring feature with hardware acceleration support. All you need to do is configure the right settings for this feature.

Open the configuration window of Actual Multiple Monitors, follow to the 'Mirroring' tab, and create a new mirror by clicking the 'Add a New Item' button (green cross).

Set the 'Monitor' option in the 'Source Type' parameter, select the primary monitor below (monitor 1 by default). Also set the 'Upd ate Interval' to 0.1 sec value, check “Start Automatically” (to run the mirror with Windows start) and the “Run as Full-screen on monitor 2” boxes. Optional you can se t the hotkey combination to start/stop this mirror.

Repeat steps 1 and 2 for monitor 3 and all other monitors to be used for displaying the primary monitor image, and save the settings by clicking the 'Apply' button.

Run all desired mirrors by pressing hotkeys, or via the Actual Multiple Monitors menu in the system tray.

The image on all used monitors (excluding the primary monitor) is a full-screen application. That is why the mouse pointer can freely leave the borders of the primary monitor. To avoid this, lock the mouse pointer inside the primary monitor:

Open the 'Hotkeys' tab.

Check the “Lock Mouse in Monitor” box.

Save settings, and press Alt+P (by default) to lock the mouse pointer in the current monitor borders.

As a result, you have a multi-monitor system with the desired number of cloned monitors. By changing settings, you can configure the system as you wish.

3. Conclusion

Thus, with the help of Actual Multiple Monitors, the main issue concerning multi-monitor cloning has been resolved.

Multiple monitor support in Windows 8.1 contains only several new features, including a limited multi-monitor taskbar. This is not enough to make work with several displays convenient. That is why Actual Multiple Monitors provides a large set of different tools improving multiple-monitors environment. This is a best alternative to the native Windows 8.1 multiple monitor support.

If you usually switch to another application and work with it, while the offline browser is doing its job, it may be very convenient to minimize the program to the system tray or to any place of your screen and save taskbar space.